Censorship, in its many forms, from restrictions on clothing and music to control over education and public speech, appears throughout Persepolis, Volume 1, offering genuinely rich material for argumentative essay writing that asks students to take and defend a position rather than simply describe what happens in the text. Unlike more purely interpretive literary essays, argumentative essays on this topic can push students to engage with genuinely contestable claims, such as evaluating the effectiveness of different characters' responses to censorship, or arguing about how the book itself portrays the relationship between state control and personal identity. Designing prompts that genuinely invite argument, rather than prompts with an obvious, uncontested answer, is the central challenge of building a strong argumentative essay assignment around this theme.

A prompt asking students simply to argue that censorship is harmful, using evidence from the book, technically qualifies as argumentative but offers little genuine room for disagreement, since almost no student reader is likely to argue the opposite position sincerely, resulting in essays that restate an obvious conclusion rather than constructing a genuinely contestable argument. A stronger prompt might ask students to evaluate which form of resistance to censorship depicted in the book, whether Marji's more overt personal rebellion or her parents' more cautious, strategic accommodation, proves more effective or more true to the family's values, a question that genuinely admits multiple defensible positions depending on how a student weighs competing considerations like safety, integrity, and long-term impact. This kind of prompt requires students to construct a genuine argument rather than simply confirming an assumption most readers already share.

Prompts can also productively focus on the book's own implicit argument about censorship, asking students to analyze and evaluate how Satrapi constructs her critique rather than simply asking students to independently argue against censorship using the book as supporting evidence. A prompt asking students to argue whether Satrapi's use of humor strengthens or undermines her critique of state censorship, for instance, shifts the argumentative focus toward literary technique and authorial choice rather than toward a moral position most readers already hold, producing essays that engage more directly with the text's specific craft rather than using the book merely as a launching point for a more general position on censorship as a social and political phenomenon.

Structuring Prompts to Require Genuine Counterargument

Strong argumentative essays require genuine engagement with counterargument, and prompt design can explicitly build this requirement in, asking students to address and respond to at least one reasonable objection to their position rather than constructing an argument that ignores any potential opposing view. For a prompt on censorship in Persepolis, this might mean requiring students to address why a character's more cautious or accommodating response to state control might be defended as reasonable, even if the student's overall argument favors more overt resistance, forcing genuine engagement with the complexity the book actually presents rather than a one-sided argument that ignores legitimate counterpoints. Building this counterargument requirement explicitly into the prompt, rather than leaving it as an optional addition students may or may not include, ensures the resulting essays demonstrate the kind of balanced, sophisticated argumentation genuine argumentative writing should require.

• Design prompts around genuinely contestable claims rather than positions most readers already share
• Ask students to evaluate the book's own literary technique in constructing its critique of censorship
• Require explicit engagement with at least one reasonable counterargument to the student's position
• Distinguish between arguing against censorship broadly and analyzing how the text specifically critiques it
• Ground abstract arguments about censorship in specific, cited scenes from the text

Grading Argumentative Essays for Genuine Position-Taking

Grading criteria for argumentative essays on this topic should explicitly reward essays that stake out a clear, specific position rather than essays that hedge excessively or attempt to present multiple sides without ever committing to a defensible claim of their own. Some students, especially those less confident in argumentative writing, default to a kind of false balance, listing considerations on multiple sides without ever synthesizing them into an actual position, which technically avoids error but also avoids the genuine intellectual work argumentative writing is meant to demonstrate. A rubric explicitly requiring a clear, specific claim, separate from and in addition to acknowledgment of counterargument, helps distinguish genuine argumentative writing from this kind of noncommittal hedging that sometimes masquerades as balanced consideration.

Teachers should also watch for and address essays that make sweeping claims about censorship as a general social or political phenomenon without sufficiently grounding those claims in specific evidence from the text, since argumentative essays assigned in a literature class should ultimately remain literary arguments supported by textual evidence, not general opinion pieces about censorship that happen to reference the book occasionally. Feedback addressing this pattern should redirect students toward specific scenes and details from Persepolis to support each claim in their argument, reinforcing that the essay's primary evidence base should be the text itself rather than general knowledge or personal opinion about censorship as an abstract political issue. This distinction matters for maintaining the essay's identity as a literature assignment rather than allowing it to drift into a more general civics or current events essay only loosely connected to the assigned text.

Connecting This Assignment to Broader Argumentative Writing Skills

Argumentative essays built around Persepolis's treatment of censorship offer a valuable opportunity to build argumentative writing skills that transfer well beyond this specific text, since the core skills involved, constructing a genuinely contestable claim, engaging seriously with counterargument, and grounding broad claims in specific evidence, apply to argumentative writing across any subject or topic students will encounter throughout their education. Teachers can explicitly frame this assignment as building these transferable skills, connecting the specific literary argument students construct here to the broader argumentative writing they will be asked to do in other academic contexts, including standardized testing formats that often require similar argumentative structure and evidence use. This framing helps students understand the assignment's value beyond the immediate literary content, situating it within a longer arc of argumentative writing development across their broader education.

For teachers looking to build a coherent argumentative writing sequence across a full course or school year, this censorship-focused Persepolis assignment can serve effectively as an early unit that establishes foundational argumentative skills, including genuine position-taking and counterargument engagement, before students move to more independent argumentative essays later in the course that may not have as rich or accessible a source text to draw evidence from. Using a well loved, accessible text like Persepolis to build these foundational argumentative skills, before asking students to apply the same skills to less familiar or more abstract material, tends to build student confidence in argumentative writing generally, since they can focus on mastering the argumentative structure and reasoning without simultaneously struggling to understand unfamiliar source material. This sequencing consideration is worth factoring into broader curriculum planning for any course that includes both this text and a significant argumentative writing component.